acquired within the last generation. This is in tolerably close agreement with other independent estimates. [6]
The character of this Imperial expansion is clearly exhibited in the list of new territories.
Though, for convenience, the year 1870 has been taken as indicative of the beginning of a conscious policy of Imperialism, it will be evident that the movement did not attain its full impetus until the middle of the eighties. The vast increase of territory, and the method of wholesale partition which assigned to us great tracts of African land, may be dated from about 1884. Within fifteen years some three and three-quarter millions of square miles have